Porous Boundaries in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves: Anticipating a Digital Composition and Subjectivity
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2013.32..29
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
-
When turning to determining a subject position for the digital age, one may look beyond the invention of its technologies and instead begin with the development of its aesthetic of networked communities, nodal expression, and collaborative identity. Virginia Woolf’s The Waves demonstrates this aesthetic in both form and content. In this paper, I will examine the role of collaboration in the form of interdisciplinary composition, arguing that Woolf’s use of musical form and dramatic monologue and dialogue structurally secure an investment in collaborative models of expression. Digital texts taut their inherent multimodality, but such compositions are also evident in pre-digital texts. In addition, I will decipher the subject position Woolf puts forward in The Waves by looking closely at how the characters determine their own identity and existence when they are alone, when they interact with one individual, and when they congregate as a group. These are exemplified more specifically in the representations of Rhoda and Bernard as equally refusing to collaborate between a self-defined identity and a group defined identity; Bernard’s channeling of Lord Byron while writing a love letter; and Woolf’s use of the red carnation as a repeated image of the intertwined nature of the characters’ collaborative identity and mutual dependence on one another.
-
[journal] Abbs, Peter / 1991 / From Babble to Rhapsody: On the Nature of Creativity / British Journal of Aesthetics 31(4) : 291~300
[journal] Albini, Theresa K. / 2013 / ’Virginia Woolf’s The Waves: A Lyrical ‘Sense of Continuity’ in Sea of Dissociation’ / Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 8(3) : 57~84
[book] Benton, Michael / 2009 / Literary Biography: An Introduction / John Wiley & Sons
[journal] Benziman, Galia / 2006 / ’Dispersed Are We’: Mirroring and National Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts / Journal of Narrative Theory 36(1) : 53~71
[journal] Brown, Paul Tolliver / 2009 / Relativity, Quantum Physics, and Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse / Journal of Modern Literature 32(3) : 39~62
[book] Calabrese, Omar / 1992 / Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times / Princeton UP
[book] Cuddy-Keane, Melba / 2000 / Virginia Woolf, Sound Technologies, and the New Aurality, In Virginia Woolf I the Age of Mechanical Reproduction / Garland Publishing, Inc
[book] Davey, Nicholas / 2003 / The subject as dialogical fiction, In Rethinking Communicative Interaction / John Benjamins Publishing Company : 53~67
[book] Deleuze, Gilles / 1993 / The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque / U of Minnesota P
[journal] Gordon, Craig / 2000 / Breaking Habits, Building Communities: Virginia Woolf and the Neuroscientific Body / Modernism/Modernity 7(1) : 25~41
[book] Groys, Boris / 2008 / A Genealogy of Participatory Art, In The Art of Participation / Thames & Hudson : 18~31
[book] Hatten, Robert S. / 2004 / Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert / Indiana UP
[journal] Higgins, Dick / 2001 / Intermedia / Leonardo 34(1) : 49~54
[journal] Hirschfeld, Heather / 2001 / Early Modern Collaboration and Theories of Authorship / PMLA 116(3) : 609~622
[book] Jacobs, Peter / 1993 / ’The Second Violin Tuning in the Ante-room’: Virginia Woolf and Music, In The Multiple Muses of Virginia Woolf / U of Missouri P
[book] Kennan, Kent / 1999 / Counterpoint Based on Eighteenth-Century Practice / Prentice Hall
[book] Kochhar-Lindgren / 1993 / Gray Narcissus Transformed: The Textual Subject in Psychoanalysis and Literature / The Pennsylvania State UP
[book] Lambert, Gregg / 2004 / The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture / Continuum
[journal] Lucenti, Lisa Marie / 1998 / Virginia Woolf’s The Waves : To Defer that ‘appalling moment’ / Criticism 40(1) : 75~97
[book] Mitchell, Katie / 2009 / Waves / Oberon Books
[book] Monaco, Beatrice / 2008 / Machinic Modernism: The Deleuzian Literary Machines of Woolf, Lawrence and Joyce / Palgrave Macmillan
[book] Ndalianis, Angela / 2004 / Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment / The MIT P
[journal] Neff, Severine / 2002 / Schoenberg’s Kristallnacht Fugue: Contrapuntal Exercise of Unknown Piece? / The Musical Quarterly 86(1) : 117~148
[book] Nicolson, Nigel / 1978 / The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. III: 1923-1928 / Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
[book] O’Brien Schaefer, Josephine / 1965 / The Three-Fold Nature of Reality in the Novels of Virginia Woolf / Mouton & Co
[book] Peach, Linden / 2000 / Critical Issues: Virginia Woolf / St. Martin’s P
[book] Peles, Stephen / 2000 / Schoenberg and the Tradition of Imitative Counterpoint: Remarks on the Third and Fourth Quartets and the Trio, In Music of My Future: The Schoenberg Quartets and Trio / Harvard UP : 117~138
[book] Purgar, Kresimir / 2006 / The Neo-Baroque Subject / Meandarmedia
[book] Rosen, Evan / 2007 / The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy / Red Ape Publishing
[book] Schlack, Beverly Ann / 1979 / Continuing Presences: Virginia Woolf’s Use of Literary Allusion / The Pennsylvania State UP
[journal] Schultz, Robin Gail / 1992 / Design in Motion: Words, Music, and the Search for Coherence in the Works of Virginia Woolf and Arnold Schoenberg / Studies in the Literary Imagination 25(2) : 5~22
[book] Schwab, Gabriele / 1994 / Subjects without Selves: Transitional Texts in Modern Fiction / Harvard UP
[journal] Sierz, Aleks / 2009 / Some Traces of Katie Mitchell / Theatre Forum 34 : 51~59
[journal] Smith, Grady / 1993 / Virginia Woolf: The Narrow Bridge of Art / Modern Age 36(1) : 38~46
[journal] Tucker, Lauryl / 2010 / Seeking the Grail, Piercing the Veil: The Waves as Parodic Critique of Eliot’s Waste Land / Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 21(4) : 285~305
[book] Warner, Eric / 1987 / Woolf The Waves / Cambridge UP
[journal] Westling, Louis / 1999 / Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World / New Literary History 30(4) : 855~875
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1929 / A Room of One’s Own / Harcourt, Inc
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1954 / A Writer’s Diary / Harcourt, Inc
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1976 / Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings / Sussex UP
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1980 / The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3: 1925-30 / Harcourt
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1975 / The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Vol. 6 / Harcourt
[book] Woolf, Virginia / 1931 / The Waves / Harcourt, Inc
-
KCI Citation (0)
71 Viewed
Print this page
Download PDF